Eclipse
by LadyVaderWrites
Summary: Ficlet: Draco muses on the choice between Darkness & Light.  Written PreHBP


Eclipse:

For as long as Draco could remember, he had hated the dark. He'd lain shivering and frightened until the day he first begged his mother for a nightlight. Her delightful gurgle of laughter at his fear had banished the demons that had chased him from his room, the bright beauty of her hair and smile calming him as he basked in the glow of her. From that night onwards his mother had always left a small charmed candle flickering on the nightstand and night after night he'd drifted off, eyes drooping from where they'd been fixed, hypnotised by the slowly dancing flame, that small force of nature that obeyed his mothers will with such ready submission.

Awe had always been the driving force behind his love for his mother, warm and soft like melted butter as he pressed himself into her bosom for comfort, cold and sharp and so, so powerful when he went against her wishes. By this reasoning, Draco had long ago decided to not go against her will, and for many years he continued to bask in the indulgent smiles she gave him, the odd night she still saw him to bed herself to stay and set the candle burning. She was his mother and the frightening clutch of love he had for her burned bright and danced in his heart, directing his will and his mind back to hers even as he grew, verging on manhood now. At night in the dungeons as he twisted, uneasy beneath the mantle of shadow, he felt that mothers love smouldering within him and he suffered the darkness with her candle in his dreams.

His father was no candle flame, no flame at all that Draco could have ever produced or witness. His father was the dominating sphere of pure heat and fire in the skies, that blinding light above that dragged him back and forth, with or against his will. As a child he'd feared him, run sobbing to his mother at the hard, often scathing words flung at him, his weakness and he had shied away from the blistering stare across the dinner table, wishing only for his toys and his mother.

As he had grown he had felt that original all-encompassing fear blossom, expand to endure the heat and scorn till one day he caught it, a brief spark, a flash of pride as Draco stood, head barely the height of his fathers shoulders, glaring up into those bright, piercing eyes, his fathers mane of light searing the air about him in a way that Draco's never did and he did it. He defied his father. "No." He'd said, quaking though his jaw was set, lip trembling as he fought not to chew on it in terror, "No, Father. I won't." His punishment had been severe, he preferred to not think on it but days later as he lay weak and his mother watched from the doorway as a house-elf soothed his pain away with cool water and odd powders rubbed into his skin, he saw it. His father stood, just behind his mother and as she let her eyes rest upon him she smiled, smug almost and he'd wondered at the way his father dragged his fingers roughly across her skin, caressing even as his words fell like molten steel to char at Draco's jangled nerves.

"Perhaps," his father had purred, eyes mocking and heavy with heat as they met Draco's own wide gaze, "Perhaps he is not the feeble whelp I thought him after all." And then, for the first time in the 11 years Draco had lived as his son, his father had crossed the threshold into his room, moving to rest a large hand, heavy yet elegant, simmering with power against his brow. "Perhaps time may yet make a man of you, my son." My son. The words fell like lava onto Draco's heart and sank in, painful and blistering against his childish yearnings for love and they dissolved the weakness from him like steam rising to cloud his eyes.

Even now when he lay awake at night, smothered by the blackness and the sting of past defeats he still pictured his Father standing over him, hair falling bright and brilliant against the backdrop of his pathetically pale white ceiling, the vivid fire of his blue eyes still scorching him to his core, tattooing his heart with the need to succeed, the desire to do his father proud, filling him with what seemed an unquenchable thirst for that light, that power that surrounded his parents, consuming him, burning him alive with both their hatred and their love.

His entire life he had been blinded by their light and now, with Potter over him, around him, inside him, soft, wet, cool kisses dousing the heat as he pushed in and in so deep that water welled in Draco's eyes, pouring to where Potter would kiss and whisper them away, he found himself wrapped in shadows, Potter's shoulders, his eyes, mouth, touch and love now blocking out the light and he felt free.

Fin.


End file.
